A Contrstive Study Of Three English Versions Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji From The Perspective Of Translation As Adaptation And Selection

The English translation of Chinese classical documents has alwaysbeen a hot issue in the translation field both at home and abroad. FuSheng Liu Ji, a classic of Chinese classical literature, including custom,traditional architecture, weddings and funerals, and family ethics of thattime, can be regarded as the perfect material to learn about the civilians’lifestyle in the Qing Dynasty. Therefore, the studies of the Englishtranslation of Fu Sheng Liu Ji have been carried out for many times. Theauthor of this thesis plans to research and compare three English versionsof Fu Sheng Liu Ji from a newly proposed theory translation asadaptation and selection, aiming at making some contributions to thespreading of the English translation of Chinese classical literature. Themainly adopted methods in this thesis are example illustration, analysis,comparison and charts. Through the elaborate comparisons and analysis,it can be concluded that: first, as for source texts of different types,dimensional transformations will be given various priorities; second,owing to the translators’ different cultural background and variouspersonal competence, the transformation extent of the three translators onthe three dimensions are various and therefore, the degree of holisticadaptation and selection of the three translations are different; third,different communicative intentions of the three translators lead to tremendous differences in the translational process. Though the author ofthe thesis tries her best to make the comparisons comprehensive, there isstill room for improvement.